From the popularity of ‘Cosmos’ on Fox-TV to the Roku launch of ‘Atheist TV’, from open atheist James Woods’s inspiring congressional campaign to Richard Dawkins’s less-than-inspiring tweets, atheists made headlines all year.

Colorado orders bakers to bake gay wedding cakes as fast as they can. An Indian court will rule on whether an uber wealthy guru died in January or is just meditating in a freezer. And Spain’s Jewless “Camp Kill Jews” finally kills the killing part of its name.

(RNS) The loss is also a setback for a new legal strategy that argued that “under God” violated the state constitution’s guarantee against discrimination rather than the U.S. Constitution’s promise of separation of church and state.

Politicians and pundits debate whether Britain is a Christian state. A Polish art group is taken to court for “blasphemously” painting Pope St. JP2 breastfeeding a priest. And Brunei implements its first phase of harsh new Shariah penalties. All this and more in April’s global recap.

(RNS) Challengers are taking a new tack by arguing the Pledge of Allegiance violates terms of the Massachusetts’ equal rights amendment, which provides that “all people are born free and equal,” and that equality cannot be abridged by “sex, race, color, creed or national origin.”